The Worst War: In faraway Congo, peace also seems far away

DANIEL USHUNDI, 11, who was shot in the fighting as rebels captured Goma, at a hospital Nov. 23 in the city in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Jehad Nga/The New York Times

What war has gone on longer than the decade-long conflict in Afghanistan and claimed more lives (5 million-plus) than any engagement except World War II? What war still threatens the peace of a continent, implicates at least five nations and shows no sign of ending any time soon — and you may have barely heard of it?

The answer is: The war in Congo.

Congo, roughly equivalent in size to all of Western Europe, had no business being a country at all. It was cobbled together in the late 1800s as a colonial consolation prize for the Belgian King Leopold II. He exploited the vast riches of his “Independent Republic of Congo” as a personal preserve — until the relentless cruelty of his policies compelled his handlers to impose a more conventional imperialistic model. The Belgians continued to exploit the hapless Congolese for another half-century before abruptly departing in 1960 — without educating or training leaders to carry on. Not surprisingly, things fell apart, with secession, assassinations and pitched battles, and an increasingly tenuous central regime. In 1965, another tyrant, the self-styled African nationalist Mobuto Sese Seko, seized power. This latter-day Leopold ruled for the next 30 years, stealing everything in sight. His departure one step ahead of another rebellion triggered years of brutality and unrest.

It is tempting to blame colonialism for Congo’s woes. But more than a half-century after independence, that argument wears thin. After all, nature blessed this vast central African nation with mineral wealth estimated to be worth as much as $24 trillion. Its hydropower could light the continent. Fertile land could feed the world. Since 1960, the Congolese have had the opportunity to develop these resources for the benefit of their own nation.

Instead, they have fought among themselves — and with their neighbors — while their roads and railroads deteriorated. Today it is impossible to get crops to market. Outside interests extract and remove natural resources — richly compensating the thin layer of elites around President Joseph Kabila, a former taxi driver who inherited the job after his father was killed. As Kabila and Co. amass fancy cars and villas in Europe — and educate their children abroad — the much-abused Congolese people rely on their wits and wiles to survive. Many have fled, particularly in the East, where rebel armies backed by Uganda, Rwanda or others terrorize the populace, kidnap children, lay waste entire villages and turn Congo into what the United Nations calls “the rape capital of the world.”

Some of those refugees have ended up in Syracuse, demonstrating typical pluck and joie de vivre in their new home.

What is the solution for a place like Congo? “Maybe in Congo, the legacy of misrule is too big to overcome,” writes Jeffrey Gettleman, foreign correspondent for The New York Times who has visited Congo regularly since 2006. In which case, what to do? How to start over? How to pick up the pieces? How to carry on from here? And what should be the role of the United States? Belgium and other former colonial powers?

These are questions without easy answers. But millions of lives depend on those answers.